


This aging public institution

by subterrain



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-26
Updated: 2009-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subterrain/pseuds/subterrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Public library AU, cont'd from the first part, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/21084">High Quality Materials</a>, wherein Brendon is a children's librarian and Ryan is acting branch manager and Spencer is a cataloguer and Jon does what is commonly referred to in outdated library terms as A/V. Still, they are rock stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This aging public institution

Ryan catches Spencer first thing in the morning when he's collecting the overnight returns from the bookdrop.

"Hey," Ryan says, folding his clipboard up against his chest. OPENING DUTIES: MAY 31, it reads, followed by a checklist of things to do like: #14, open the blinds; #4, boot up the public computers; #4b, purge their caches of porn, #23 fetch the newspapers.

Spencer looks up from where he's squatting with an arm pushed so far into the bin's tiny opening that he looks like an amputee or an incorrectly-made puppet. He says, "Morning Ryan."

"The new guy-" says Ryan.

"Brendon," corrects Spencer.

"Okay, Brendon the new guy wants to have a rock concert."

Spencer extricates his arm from the bin, clasping a couple of dirty paperbacks. He frowns at their dogearedness. "What. Like, here?"

"That's what I said." Ryan cocks a hip. He takes the paperbacks and sets them on the book truck as Spencer goes back in for more.

Spencer's always been diligent, Ryan thinks. But he doesn't let his approving smile show.

Spencer says, as he rummages: "That's cool. That's a really cool idea, actually."

Ryan hugs his clipboard a little tighter to his cardigan, "No it isn't."

"It totally is." Spencer files his last few books on the cart, stands up and rubs his hands off on his hips. "We've been losing out on the teenagers ever since-" his voice drops, even though they're the only two people in the building, "-the collections policy got butchered."

Ryan shakes his head, "Dude, I'm acting manager, you can't complain about that shit to me."

Spencer cocks his head. "Actually, I thought I complained about it to you last night." Then he adds, totally unnecessarily, like he's reading a fortune cookie: "-in bed."

"Stop it!" says Ryan, waving his hands, and with them his clipboard. "Professionalism! I'm supposed to be running a tight fucking ship here!"

Spencer's laughing at him: "You're running some kind of fucking ship, anyway. That is, a ship full of-"

Ryan stops him with a swat at his junk that makes Spencer duck and cover hard enough to stop spewing his terrible mockery. He looks back at Ryan, still chuckling.

"Okay." Ryan regains his composure, adjusts his bowtie. "So you vote yes."

Spencer says, "I vote yes twice, once for me, and once for the greater good of this aging public institution."

Ryan says, "Duly noted."

Spencer wheels the truck away, and before Ryan goes to take care of item #23, he checks off item #12: empty bookdrop. Then he scrawls: _Great job, Spencer!_

The irony will be lost on Renee, whenever she comes back from mat leave to review his various doings as Acting Branch Manager, but for now it feels important to note that Spencer is very skilled at shoving his appendages into various openings.

No one will ever say that Ryan Ross isn't grateful for the small mercies.

\--

Later, Brendon comes in for the afternoon shift, rolling his banana-seated bicycle into the back room for safekeeping while greeting everyone with a cascading series of grins: as the old one ebbs, a new one flows in to replace it. Then, and Ryan times it on his pocketwatch, Jon strolls in on a slow count of 30, looking chill with his sunglasses and his ice coffee and his tousled hair.

Ryan lets them pretend that no one knows that they probably spent all morning sitting in the grass down at the river holding hands and eating greasy takeout because they were up all night playing guitar hero and giving each other rimjobs.

He pretends, because it would be hypocritical not to considering that that's what he and Spencer do on their days off.

And also Spencer told him about the blowjobs in the repair nook during a weaker moment, and now Ryan has to pretend to not know so he doesn't have to fire them.

Instead, Ryan calls a staff meeting at the information desk. The pages come in from shelving and the circ desk closes up so Esther and the other assistants can come over.

"This will just be quick," Ryan announces. His new clipboard list reads: AGENDA FOR STAFF MEETING: MAY 31. He just printed it off. The agenda items are: jeans at work, we have an image to maintain y/n?; stinky food in the microwave, n/n!; loud talking from the staff, it's kind of hypocritical; and ROCK CONCERT??????!

He decides to go in reverse order. "So," he says, looking around at everyone, and accidentally catching his eyes on Brendon's alert and interested gaze, then Spencer's sardonic mouth, then Jon's poorly-masked yawn. "I have some exciting news."

If he needed proof that Spencer and Brendon were right, and he and all the other shushing naysayers were wrong, it's that the pages – two high schoolers named Mitch and Alexis who make minimum wage and spend half their time dog-earing sex scenes in fantasy novels – perk up immediately and spend fifteen minutes suggesting bands – the Killers, MGMT, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Radiohead - that would be awesome, and also impossible, to get. And as a counterpoint, Esther, Cynthia and Margaret stand planted with folded arms in various shades of silent dismay-through-disgruntlement.

Probably, Ryan thinks, he should make sure none of them are working the evening shift that day. He decides to break up the meeting without mentioning anyone's mom jeans, and adding insult to injury.

Brendon lingers. "Holy crap, Ryan," he says. "This is gonna be so awesome!"

Ryan fiddles with his clipboard, "So have Radiohead got back to you yet?" he asks, instead of acknowledging the very clear _thankyouthankyouthankyou_ in Brendon's eyes.

Brendon snorts, "No, but it's cool. Spencer plays drums."

Ryan busts out a laugh, "That's a good one," and smacks Brendon's arm with his clipboard and walks away.

\--

Spencer plays drums, and also has access to Ryan's secret moleskine of really terrible poetry (made less secret by the fact that he keeps it in the secret sex stuff drawer, which Spencer has access to for obvious reasons).

Ryan wasn't really aware that either of these two facts would ever be relevant to his career until six weeks later when he's sitting in Jon's garage listening to those poems come out of Brendon's mouth, sounding terrifyingly like they were written to be sung by him specifically.

Ryan's hands don't relax from sweaty fists through their entire run-through. Seven songs, none of which suck, most of which need work.

Brendon has this Casio portable that sounds a little bit better than a set of tuned tin cans, and Jon has apparently been playing in bands since high school, and has a drum set left over from one of his many previous endeavors. Weirdest of all is the fact that Spencer's not as obviously out-of-practice as he should be for a dude who's spent the last three years slapping bar codes on paperbacks.

It's kind of crazy, seeing how easily it all came together while he'd deliberately averted his eyes. Ryan's throat is a little dry. He doesn't clap when they finish because it would be weird. He just stands up, picks up the sheets of paper with scrawled notes and his – his very own atrocious, derivative, hackneyed – words, and examines them under the light of the plastic window.

Eventually, he says, "You guys kind of need a guitar."

\--

They play the show in the quiet reading area. Brendon spent the past week tootling around on his banana seat, plastering all the high schools and middle schools and kindergartens in the area with posters: LIBRARY CONCERT! ROCK MUSIC IN THE LIBRARY! COME LISTEN! PLUS JUICE.

So there are more kids than Ryan has ever seen in the library, standing around looking nervous or guilty but not very quiet.

Mitch the page is manning the juice table; Alexis is DJing the sound system music (MGMT, Radiohead, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but she put her foot down at the Killers) and Esther volunteered to do the introductions like she normally does for the book talks. Standing up on the carpeted podium with her mom jeans cinched tight, she clears her throat.

"Hello, students," she says. "Welcome to the library."

The milling herd turns to look at her. Ryan shifts his feet in the wings - actually just a corner blocked off by a shelving unit – and feels Spencer's hand squeeze his. "Oh my god," Brendon whispers, his eyes huge.

"Everyone, everyone. Could you please put up your hands to indicate that your mouth is closed," says Esther. "Don't make me shush anyone."

A few hands from the younger kids go up. Parents standing around in the back smirk indulgently. The teenagers look mutinous and ironic all at once, grumbling to themselves.

"Ha ha!" Esther laughs, bright as a penny. "I'm just fooling around. Make as much noise as you can, please. Scream your heads off, because this is a ROCK! CONCERT!"

Esther shouts that last bit straight into the microphone like it's a bullhorn and she's commanding troops. She's so loud that for a second everyone just stares at her in shock, parents, kids, librarians, everyone.

Then, from behind the juice table at the back, Mitch lifts his arm in a loose slo-pitch arm-pump and calls with total sincerity: "Yeeeeeeeeeah, Esther. Woooo!"

Immediately the young kids are hollering. Kids jump up and down, arms in the air. The teenagers go from wary to wry. Anarchy breaks out in the reading area. Brendon jumps out onto the stage, Jon close behind, and Ryan ends up following mostly because Spencer drags him.

From there, it just gets louder.

\--

On Tuesday, Ryan gets a phone call from the YA librarian at the central branch. He tells her it'll cost $50 plus lunch to get them all there, and consults the schedule before agreeing to a Saturday afternoon show in two weeks. He tells her he wants the big auditorium and that she's responsible for filling it.

And she sounds so sincerely happy about it as she hangs up that he resolves to call around and figure out what a better going rate might be.

He sits in his office, tapping his red gel pen against his clipboard (ABM PRIORITIES: JULY 21, #1 get juice stains out of carpet; #2 check voicemail, #3 harrass Jon re: sticky DVD situation) and staring through his half-closed blind slats at the stacks.

There's a cautious knock and Mitch and Alexis the pages slide in, maybe looking at Ryan through their bangs, maybe not. It's hard to tell. They look like a matched set of sheepdogs. Alexis says, "Hey, boss."

Ryan says, "Hey guys. What's going on?"

Mitch shrugs, "Not much. Just shelvin'."

Ryan waits for the second part of the answer, the part that says what they want. But nothing is forthcoming. Eventually, Ryan says, "Thanks for coming and doing the concert thing last week. That was cool."

Mitch says, "Our pleasure." Then he reaches a hand up and puts it through his bangs so Ryan can see pimples and blue eyes. Then the curtain drops again.

Alexis rocks on her heels and says, "You guys were tight."

Mitch says, "Yeah, I was like, actually into it."

Alexis says, "Way better than we thought you'd be. No offense."

"We didn't even have to be drunk."

"I took a poll, and seven out of nine of my friends said that you guys are hotter than MGMT, anyway."

Ryan says, "Uh, thanks."

Alexis shrugs, "You're welcome."

"This is our legitimate critical opinion," Mitch adds. "Just so you know."

Ryan nods. "Okay."

"Okay." They shuffle out of his office.

Fifteen minutes later Ryan goes into the stacks and finds them huddled over a book of Russian prison tattoos. "Hey you guys," he says. They swivel their pointed noses and swept hairstyles at him, and he wonders at the absurdity of appealing to them as the high priests of tastemaking young hipness. "You think anyone would wanna come see another show?"

\--

Ryan walks into the back, dropping a box of new acquisitions on Spencer's desk and gets a faceful of shush and a smirking thumbjerk towards the sliding wooden door of the repair nook.

He rolls his eyes. "Seriously?" he asks, loudly.

Spencer chortles, eerily silent, his face turning pink under his beard.

Ryan listens for a moment, head cocked. "They are admirably quiet."

Spencer sucks in a breath to calm himself. "They get a lot of practice."

Ryan says, "We have a new gig."

Spencer says, "What? Actually?"

Ryan shrugs. "It's just another branch. But they have that auditorium. Maybe like, a sound system? I don't know."

Spencer smiles and reaches into the box of new books, halfheartedly pretending to work. "That's cool," he says.

Inside the nook, there is the unmistakable sound of a shelf of books falling onto the floor and an urgent _Shhhhhh!_.

Ryan clears a spot for his ass on Spencer's desk and sits with a sneaker on Spencer's chair, between his legs. He puts his chin on his fist. "I should totally fire them," he sighs.

Spencer wiggles his crotch a little bit closer to Ryan's sneaker. "Then you'd have to fire all of us."

"Yeah," Ryan agrees, and presses his foot in firm.

"I like to think we'd be pretty good at spending all day making out and playing music," Spencer says.

The door to the nook slides open and Jon slips out with Brendon following like a drunken pick-up, his hands in Jon's back pockets. They both look a little less than totally mortified at getting finally, officially caught.

"I'm pretty sure we would be _awesome_ at it," Ryan says.


End file.
